“But in that moment I understood what they say about nostalgia, that no matter if you're thinking of something good or bad, it always leaves you a little emptier afterward.”
“Maybe we all just exist, all versions of us exist at times, and we have to figure out a way to get to each of them, to find each one and tell that version that it's okay, that it's all justthe way it works, a concept too powerful to ignore but too complicated to explain.”
“We all get lots of people. And maybe we don’t always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all.”
“Some people say dying alone is a fate worse than death itself. Well, they should try being alone during the living part sometimes. There's no quicker way to make you wonder why the hell you ever thought you'd want to return.”
“You ever feel like you know someone so much that they can breathe for you? Like when their chest and your chest rise and fall, they do it together because they have to? That's how it felt. That's how it always felt.”
“I thought maybe a day was coming when I'd stop constantly worrying about how to live. Maybe at some point I'd just start living, no questions asked.”
“You can find ways to be okay with dying, but you can’t fake your way through living.”
“No matter how often you see or talk to someone, no matter how much you know them or don't know them, you always fill up some space in their lives that can't ever be replaced the right way again once you leave it.”
“You have to forget about people when you can't have them anymore. That's the only way to be okay.”
“Secrets, he said, will boil under your skin until it feels like every time you speak, every time you look in the mirror, every time you hug someone or kiss someone or tell someone you love them, it feels like you’re going to die.”
“All that time I'd spent worrying about why I'm here and how I'm supposed to live had kept me from remembering that Jeremy Pratt will never be back. His people will never have him again. He is Jeremy Pratt who died and stayed dead and will never get a second chance. And even though that hand that spent the last five years holding hers was somehow doing it again, it wasn't Jeremy Pratt's anyone”
“You're both living these lives you didn't choose to live in a world full of people telling you what that's supposed to mean. That's messed up.”
“Okay, so first we get you a new computer and then a Facebook page. Priorities, you know," he said, typing in Kyle's password.
"What would I do without you--"
"Found her," he interrupted. "She's at Carrie's OK Bar. It's downtown."
"What the hell is Carrie's OK Bar?"
"It's a karaoke bar. Travis, come on."
"Wait, how do you know she's there?"
"She checked in there about twenty minutes ago."
"What does that mean?"
"Oh. Right. Since you left, it's become very important that we all constantly know each other's thoughts, locations, and birthdays."
"That's really stupid. Except for in this one very specific situation. I can't go if her fiancé's there, though. That would be too weird."
"He's not."
"How do you know?"
"Because she put 'Girls' Night' with about five exclamation points after it."
"Are people just asking to be murdered?"
"Pretty much. So are we going?”
“It's a real shame. I like how people act on holidays. Everyone just seems . . . I don't know-- lighter, maybe. Like they're allowed to have fun all day long and eat anything they want and do silly things, and no one cares because, hey, it's a holiday, so why not?”
“Everyone just outgrew me. Now I think I'm just haunting them.”
“You have to forget about people when you can’t have them anymore.”
“But in that moment I understood what they say about nostalgia, that no matter if you’re thinking of something good or bad, it always leaves you a little emptier afterward.”
“We have this way of putting certain ideas out of our minds...we do that. Humans, I mean. We have to bury things, hopes and dreams, so deep sometimes that it takes a little while to access those things once we need them again.”
“You know things are weird when you start appreciating your farts.”
“That's the thing. You come back and you expect everyone to be just the way they were when you left. But it's not that easy, okay? You can't just force us all to be how you liked us.”
“Secrets...will boil under your skin until it feels like every time you speak, every time you look in the mirror, every time you hug someone or kiss someone or tell someone you love them, it feels like you're going to die.”
“(N)o matter how often you see or talk to someone, no matter how much you know them or don't know them, you always fill up some space in their lives that can't ever be replaced the right way again once you leave it.”
“I'm not sure why so many people get addicted to pain pills because, at a certain point, not feeling anything becomes much more painful than the disease eating away at your cells.”
“That's how I knew I loved her so much, because not loving her didn't make any sense once I'd known what it felt like.”
“When one of us is dying, they say a part of all of us is. I think that's why it hurts. We go our whole lives losing little chunks until we can't lose any more of them.”
“(I)t's too easy to get hung up on people the way we do. I mean, that we all get one person to be ours and that's it. We should look at it differently. We all get lots of people. And maybe we don't always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all...We all get people that help us make sense of the world, right? We just have to figure out how to keep them however we can.”
“Now that you are living on such intimate terms with her, Gwyn has emerged as a slightly different person... She is both funnier and more salacious than you imagined, more vulgar and idiosyncratic, more passionate, more playful, and you are startled to realize how deeply she exults in filthy language and the bizarre slang of sex... Common twentieth-century words do not interest her. She shuns the term making love, for example, in favor of older, more hilarious locutions, such as rumpty-rumpty, quaffing, and bonker bang. A good orgasm is referred to as a bone-shaker. Her ass is a rumdadum. Her crotch is a slittie, a quim, a quim-box, a quimsby. Her breasts are boobs and tits, boobies and titties, her twin girls. At one time or another, your penis is a bong, a blade, a slurp, a shaft, a drill, a quencher, a lancelot, a lightning rod, Charles Dickens, Dick Driver, and Adam Junior... In the grip of approaching orgasm, however, she tends to revert to the contemporary standbys, falling back on the simplest, crudest words in the English lexicon to express her feelings. Cunt, pussy, fuck. Fuck me, Adam. Again and again. Fuck me, Adam. For an entire month you are the captive of that word, the willing prisoner of that word, the embodiment of that word. You dwell in the land of flesh, and your cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life.”
“She complains all the time about her hair turning gray and her butt sagging and her skin wrinkling, but I'm supposed to be grateful for a face full of zits, hair in embarrassing places, and feet that grow an inch a night. Utter crap.”
“God, she loved this man. She loved his gruff, sweet, thoughtful sides. And his edgy side. She wasn’t in love with the perfect Cord McKay she’s been fantasizing over forever, but the real flesh and blood man. The real man. Flaws and all.”
“Whatever Janet, then, might, perhaps—I do not know—have imagined it her duty to say to Gibbie had she surmised his ignorance, having long ceased to trouble her own head, she had now no inclination to trouble Gibbie's heart with what men call the plan of salvation. It was enough to her to find that he followed her Master. Being in the light she understood the light, and had no need of system, either true or false, to explain it to her. She lived by the word proceeding out of the mouth of God. When life begins to speculate upon itself, I suspect it has begun to die. And seldom has there been a fitter soul, one clearer from evil, from folly, from human device—a purer cistern for such water of life as rose in the heart of Janet Grant to pour itself into, than the soul of Sir Gibbie. But I must not call any true soul a cistern: wherever the water of life is received, it sinks and softens and hollows, until it reaches, far down, the springs of life there also, that come straight from the eternal hills, and thenceforth there is in that soul a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
“Redd turned to her assassins. "What is it I always say?"
The Cat, Sacrenoir, and the others bandied uncertain glances about.
"Don’t be stupid?" ventured Alistaire.
"I should kill you now?" offered The Cat.
"Do I have to murder everyone myself?" tried Siren.
"No, idiots! When in doubt, go for the head. That’s what I always say. ”
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